<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2026/feb/12/capitalist-model-climate-growth-capitalism-species-humanity>
"We have an urgent responsibility. Our existing economic system is incapable of
addressing the social and ecological crises we face in the 21st century. When
we look around we see an extraordinary paradox. On the one hand, we have access
to remarkable new technologies and a collective capacity to produce more food,
more stuff than we need or that the planet can afford. Yet at the same time,
millions of people suffer in conditions of severe deprivation.
What explains this paradox? Capitalism. By capitalism we do not mean markets,
trade and entrepreneurship, which have been around for thousands of years
before the rise of capitalism. By capitalism we mean something very odd and
very specific: an economic system that boils down to a dictatorship run by the
tiny minority who control capital – the big banks, the major corporations and
the 1% who own the majority of investible assets. Even if we live in a
democracy and have a choice in our political system, our choices never seem to
change the economic system. Capitalists are the ones who determine what to
produce, how to use our labour and who gets to benefit. The rest of us – the
people who are actually doing the production – do not get a say.
And for capital, the purpose of production is not primarily to meet human needs
or to achieve social progress, much less to deliver on any ecological goals.
The purpose is to maximise and accumulate profit. That is the overriding
objective. This is the capitalist law of value. And to maximise profits,
capital requires perpetual growth – ever increasing aggregate production,
regardless of whether it is necessary or harmful.
So we end up with irrational forms of production as a result: we get massive
production of things such as SUVs, mansions and fast fashion, because these
things are highly profitable to capital, but chronic underproduction of
obviously necessary things like affordable housing and public transit, because
these are much less profitable to capital, or not profitable at all."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
